Belief in God is key to maintaining social order

I listened to the debate between Mr. Clinton and Mr. Dole last Sunday night. Though they were both articulate and experienced, neither one really focused on what many consider to be America's central overriding problem -- the moral and social decay of our people and the danger this decay poses to our basic freedoms. There was no mention of God or the value religion can play in restoring our society to sanity. There was no mention of the need for prayer in public schools, the value of church life, or the congruity that the practice of religion and spirituality in society can offer as an antidote to big government, big taxes, high crime rates, more police, high divorce rates, cheating in college, and illegal drug use among the young.

I can think of nothing more important for the future stability of America than placing God at its center. I cannot think of anything more dangerous than for our leaders to ignore the role that belief in God can and must play in sustaining order and preserving our precious liberties.

Let me begin with the supposition that everything in the physical realm, that everything in the physical universe from an atom to stars in distant galaxies, has a spiritual root and dimension. Nothing, absolutely nothing that we do, nothing that we say, nothing that we write, nothing that we think can manifest itself without a spiritual root or spiritual consequence.

The universe, with its billions of galaxies and trillions and trillions of stars, moves out and around a center. It's an expanding universe created by a force that still might in time and space have the capacity to draw everything back unto itself and implode into an immensely dense black hole that would absorb all light and matter. No light would be permitted to escape, no more.

God gave Moses the Law to keep social order among the Jews. The Egyptians and Greeks made sense of the order and form in nature through geometry. The Chinese sought to preserve order in the present by revering order in the past. The Arabs helped give equivalency to order through the perfection of algebra. The Renaissance in Italy gave order to the solar system by placing the sun at the center of planets in elliptical orbits. Isaac Newton explained the role of gravity in the order of things as he looked to God as the great clock maker.

Albert Einstein advanced the notion of the relativity of order through gravitational pull on matter in space and time. He died in search of a unified field theory that might have provided an umbrella for both the apparent randomness of particle movement and the theory of relativity. He believed that there had to be a natural order for relationship in all things big and small. "God," said Einstein, "did not play dice with the universe." There had to be order in everything.

Human beings are at base spiritual entities. It is the spiritual essence within us and not the organization of atoms and molecules that gives us life. Each of us is first and foremost a spiritual being locked in a human body. The matter that comprises our flesh and bones is the matter of distant stars. The life force within us remains tied to the Almighty Spirit that gives movement to all matter in universal space and time.

The Spirit of which I speak is God. The mind of God is order. The imagination of God is creation. The heart of God is love. The hope of God for mankind is freedom.

The only order that exists without belief in God is the order that accompanies the tyranny of the state. If people are not moved to value and respect one another's person and property out of belief in God, then they must be or will be controlled by the oppressive force of the state. They tyranny of man over man rules when men abandon the natural laws of God which he designed to govern human behavior.

In God's plan for the universe and for life on this planet there can be no freedom without order, no justice without love and no compassion for others without surrender or self sacrifice. For those who would keep God out of our schools and public affairs, I say to you that you are promoting disorder, social chaos, hatred, ignorance and racial conflict.

There is a natural order of things that emanates from the mind of God. Values should not be taught without the Ten Commandments, nor ethics without morality. Science should never be explored without a sense of God, and history never reviewed without an understanding of religion's role in the progress of civilization.

I can only hope that, during the next presidential debate, both Mr. Dole and Mr. Clinton are asked to explain their views on religious freedom and the meaning of the separation of church and state. We need to learn what these men think about the role belief in God and the practice of religion can and should play for the future stability of America.

Dr. Richard Rioux is a resident of Stevenson Ranch. His commentary appears on Sundays.